


take comfort where you can

by renecdote



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Dick is fake dead, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief, Mourning, Zitka - Freeform, but Damian doesn't know that, he just thinks he's dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: Dick is dead and Damian takes comfort from something his brother used to take comfort from: his stuffed elephant.





	take comfort where you can

**Author's Note:**

> A pair of drabbles for two prompts on tumblr. Decided to post them here together since the second doesn't make sense without the first.
> 
> First drabble is set while Damian thinks Dick is dead. Second takes place after Dick returns.

**[1]**

**** There’s a soft knock on the doorframe and Drake asks, “Can I come in?”

“No.” The word is muffled through the covers over Damian’s head. 

Grayson would come in anyway, sit down on the bed beside Damian, fill the room with his annoying chatter, his endless energy, his love. Drake stays in the doorway. 

“Alfred says dinner is ready.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Drake wavers between leaving it at that or staying to push it. Damian can feel his hesitation like a tangible thing. It feels like grapple lines pulled taught before the upswing, rushing through the air on the end of a wire, “what if it snaps?” always in the back of his mind. Damian used to shrug away that concern. If he fell, Grayson would catch him.

But who will catch him now?

The thought steals his breath like a blow to the solar plexus. His throat feels tight, aching with suppressed emotion. Damian squeezes his eyes shut. Eyes red and puffy from the tears he’s already shed.

“I know…” There’s a hand on his shoulder, a weight dipping the mattress. Drake sounds as lost as Damian feels. “I know it hurts, and I know you don’t want to talk to me, but you should talk to someone. Bottling it up, pushing it away… it may feel better now, but it’s just going to hurt more in the long run. Dick-” Drake’s voice falters for a moment “-Dick wouldn’t want you to do that.”

Damian sits up. He doesn’t want Drake’s comfort or advice. What good will it do? It won’t bring Grayson back. 

“Go away,” Damian says.

Drake stands up. His movements are stilted and awkward. He won’t look at Damian straight on; Damian wonders whether he’s been crying as well. “Okay. I’ll tell Alfred to bring some food up for you later.”

Only when Drake has closed the door on the way out does Damian realise heleft something behind. Grey and fading with age, slightly lopsided after several mending jobs, staring up at Damian with one loose eye. 

“Zitka,” Damian murmurs. Grayson’s elephant, the one Damian had scoffed at him still having after so long. He picks it up, turning it over in his hands. 

A memory comes to him from the feeling of soft fuzz beneath his fingers. Grayson, sitting up in bed, smiling despite the bandage around his head as he told Damian about Zitka. Saying with a strange mix of fondness and sombreness, “She saved my life once. The real elephant, not the stuffed one. Pulled me out of a fire when the circus tent collapsed…” He’d trailed off, gone quiet, and Damian hadn’t pushed for more details. He’d stared down at the stuffed toy on Grayson’s lap and wondered what it was like to feel so much emotional attachment to an inanimate object. A facsimile of the real thing for which it was named.

Grayson had taken him to the circus a month later and Damian had started to think that maybe he understood. Grayson could not take the circus with him when he left, but could take something to remember it by. Something to hold when he felt sad, to crush to his chest after nightmares, to look at and remember happier times.

White hot anger crashes over Damian like waves breaking on rocks. Happier times? What good are those when there won’t be any more? What good is a stupid stuffed animal when Grayson is dead? He flings the toy away with a snarl.

But as quickly as the thump of the elephant against the wall comes, Damian’s anger is gone. It leaves behind a crippling emptiness that threatens to drown him in his heartache. He can see Grayson’s disappointed look as real as if he were in the room. That downtick to his lips, the lines around his eyes, the way his voice would get all quiet and doleful.

“What did Zitka ever do to you?” Grayson would ask, and he’d try to sound joking but Damian would be able to tell he was sad. Because Grayson loved Zitka and Damian hadn’t shown her the appreciation he should have. 

Damian goes and picks Zitka up. He lies back down and hugs the elephant to his chest. When the first tears darken the toy’s grey fuzz, Zitka doesn’t say anything. That would be ridiculous, she’s a stuffed elephant. But for a moment… For a moment it almost feels like Damian is being hugged back.

** [2] **

Dick is stepping out of his bedroom at the Manor for the first time in months when he almost runs into to Damian. He automatically reaches out to steady his brother and finds that his hands sit higher on the kid’s shoulders than they used to. Something cold and slimy coils in his stomach. Damian grew while Dick was… away. dead. undercover. 

Damian steps back, shaking away the surprise of running into Dick. “Grayson,” he says. Stiff, uncomfortable. Embarrassed? “I thought you were downstairs.”

They’ve already done the emotional reunion, but running into each other in the hallway, casual as can be, like the old days when neither of them had lived through the other being dead (or supposedly dead) makes Dick feel strangely off-kilter. He hadn’t expected to come home to Damian. Damian hadn’t expected him to come home at all. 

Dick smiles. He tussles Damian’s hair. “Just came up to grab a sweater.”

Damian ducks away from the hand in his hair and the movement puts his back against the wall. He freezes there, like ducking away was just reflex, like he wants to close the distance between them again, but something holds him in place. That’s when Dick notices that Damian’s arm is behind his back, that it has been the whole conversation.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” he asks, mind jumping to patrol injuries and Damian’s tendency to hide them.

Damian shakes his head. He takes a step away, sidling along the wall. “Nothing.”

Dick frowns. “If it was nothing you wouldn’t be hiding it behind your back.”

“There is nothing wrong with my hand,” Damian reiterates. His tone is insistent but it doesn’t seem to be untruthful. Dick got good at figuring out when Damian was lying, especially about being hurt, and none of his tells are there now. He just looks… guilty. And embarrassed.

A mystery, then. Dick lets the facts turn over in his head. He ran into Damian outside his room. Damian was likely heading to Dick’s room. He’s hiding something he doesn’t want to Dick to see.

Dick leans forward. He grins slightly. “Have you got a present for me?”

Damian’s cheeks are steadily turning red. “Tt. Nothing of the sort.”

“Oh?” Dick’s grin widens. “Well I guess I’ll have to find out myself…”

There’s a brief, half-hearted scuffle, like all the times they used to start off training seriously then devolve into ridiculous wrestling. Dick’s chest feels light, bubbling with something like laughter as he pins Damian against his chest and grabs what he’d been holding behind his back.

And then he freezes.

“Zitka,” he murmurs. He’d left her… he can’t remember. On his bed? In his apartment? Somewhere Damian must have found her.

Damian is looking at his shoes. “I… I was simply holding onto her for you, so she would not be neglected.”

Dick doesn’t say anything. He just pulls his brother into a proper hug, Zitka crushed between their chests. He buries his nose in Damian’s hair, breathing in the familiar scent of his minty shampoo. “I’m glad you had her,” he whispers. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :) 
> 
> Tumblr is [here](http://tantalum-cobalt.tumblr.com).


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